App for cityofariel

[bansheewearsprada]

→ OOC
□ Name: Tim
□ Age: over 25
□ Contact: 03robin@gmail.com or boywonder
□ Journal: boywonder
□ Do you play anyone in Ariel?: Jack Frost (nippingatnoses) and Elizabeth (seedoftheprophet)

→ IC
□ Name: Lydia Martin
□ Journal: bansheewearsprada
□ Series: Teen Wolf
□ Canon point: After season 3, episode 15 (“Galvanize”)
□ History: here
□ Personality: Lydia comes across as one of those mean, popular cheerleader types (though she's not a cheerleader). At first glance, she's a very superficial girl who values looks above mostly anything else. Her family has plenty of money, and that is apparent in her attitude and her interactions with the world. She's the most popular girl at school, she's ridiculously pretty, and socially she's used to being better than everyone else. Again at first glance, it seems like there's not much more to her than that – social status and flippant attitude.


In reality, that Mean Girls personality is carefully constructed (though at this point in the canon, some of it has fallen away quite a bit; it's gotten harder for her to maintain it due to her own psychological trauma). There's a lot of contradiction in the way Lydia presents herself, and the way she is underneath.


Lydia enjoys being popular and having high social status, so she puts on an act. She pretends to be clueless, or much dumber than she actually is. She focuses loudly on being superficial, she surrounds herself with attractive friends and snubs classmates who don't fit into that mold. She dresses perfectly, she cares about styles and makeup and brands. She can wrap boys around her little finger without even trying. Unbeknownst to most of Beacon Hills High School, though, Lydia is one of the smartest – if not the smartest – students there. She has a genius level IQ, she can do intense math problems easily, she knows a lot about science, etc. But she'd hate to give up her social status and be teacher's pet, so she hides all of that away.


She also keeps it so that most people only see her surface emotions. The boyfriend she had for the beginning of her high school career, Jackson Whittemore, was arguably the hottest guy in school. She often acted like she didn't care if they stayed together, and would acknowledge that she wouldn't want to be with anyone else because no one else could live up to him physically. In truth, though, Lydia really did love Jackson and was devastated when they broke up, and even more devastated when he died. (Jackson did actually survive, though he moved away to London right after that. Lydia deals with this by refusing to deal with this or mention him or talk about him most of the time.)
Lydia refuses to let any emotions rule over her. She maintains aloofness because she likes to be in control. She really doesn't like feeling like things are not going her way. Having such a high social status means that she's used to getting her way, and she can resort to brattiness or pettiness really easily to keep things going her way. She has no problem insulting other people, especially ones outside her social circle. She places her own emotional safety above other people's in most cases (especially in public places), and she'd much rather tear someone down than let them damage her emotionally. She considers herself a strong, independent girl – and for the most part, she's just that.


Lydia can be incredibly manipulative, especially with boys. She will lead them on, letting them think she cares or she wants them, and crush them later once she’s gotten what she wants out of them. She does this with girls, too, though she doesn’t use the romance aspect on them. She’s never above manipulating someone else to get what she wants out of them, and she does so with very little remorse. Whether it takes flattery or insults, it doesn't matter; she'll sling either one if it will drive another person the way she wants. That isn’t to say she’s never sorry or never feels bad, but she tends to place her own needs before anyone else’s. She USUALLY doesn't feel awful, but she does have moments. This seems to be true for mostly petty situations, more than more serious ones, as she’s willing to go to great lengths to use her power to actually help or protect her friends if and when she can. She’s also matured a lot since the beginning of the series. She doesn't really want to see anyone seriously harmed. Undergoing a lot of weird supernatural trauma will force a girl to grow up a little.
Continuing on the independent topic, Lydia is really in control of her own sexuality. This bears mentioning not because of the nature of Ariel, but because of the nature of being a teenage girl. While it's true that she does play into many things that are “expected” of girls her age, showing the world her love of makeup and pretty clothes and brand names, she refuses to let boys control her decisions. Instead, she prefers to make the call in relationships. She would maintain (whether it was true or not) that she ended the relationship with Jackson, though she'd also maintain a superficial reason for it rather than admit any emotional attachment. Later, when she has a relationship with Aiden, she mentions wanting a distraction, not a boyfriend. She's willing to engage physically (on her terms as much as possible) but not emotionally. And she's willing to engage physically without really giving it a second thought. Lydia has no hang ups about sleeping with people. If she wants something, she just goes after it – whether that's a new purse or a sexual encounter.
Despite how much she tries to maintain emotional distance, she isn't always able to do so. She really loved Jackson, and she did get hurt by him more than once because of that. She would insist that she doesn't care about other people (such as Stiles or Scott), her actions prove that her words are untrue. She's gone out of her way for several of her friends, putting herself in danger to either help or warn them. Also, when she's alone with someone, Lydia will often let her aloof, bitchy persona drop and will be softer and more genuine.
Although the show pretty much ignores this and handles it terribly when it bothers to handle it at all, Lydia does have some serious issues thanks to the supernatural nonsense that happens in Beacon Hills. She was bitten by a werewolf (Peter Hale), though the bite did not have the effect of turning her into a werewolf herself. However, Peter was able to invade her thoughts, and used her without her permission or even her knowledge to achieve his own ends of...not being dead anymore, basically. Because of this, she has some PTSD issues. It's made her even less likely to seek out emotional attachment to anyone, and sometimes she can be incredibly tense or on edge. The more she deals with supernatural stuff, the less she really wants to. While she still has her reputation at school to maintain, it's also well-known that for awhile she was crazy. And now, with her banshee abilities making her hear things, she still seems kind of crazy. It's hard to be the most popular girl in school and keep the other students in awe of you when you're a little off balance, after all. It makes that a harder line for Lydia to walk.
Dealing with the supernatural – and seeing several people she's known die in horrible ways – has brought Lydia closer to the other people at school who deal with it – though those people are generally much less popular than she is. Not all of them are misfits or outcasts at school, but...they're really not the most popular group. Still, there's a solidarity she can find there that she can't find with her more superficial friends. And though she tries not to let her emotions rule her, she does definitely have emotions (and they control her more than she'd ever admit aloud). She does really care about her friends, though she doesn't show it easily. She would blow off anyone telling her how much she cared about someone else, but she'd still keep doing what she can to support them. Lydia really does not want to see more people hurt or killed. She doesn't want to keep having weird psychic visions or hearing voices or dealing with all kinds of otherworldly stuff. But since she's in this fight whether she wants to be or not, she'll use her intellect as best as she can to help fight it.
Lydia's emotions due rule her sometimes. She is a teenager, after all, and though she tries to stay distant and seem superficial, she's not really that bad a person and she's not nearly as cruel as she can appear to be (though she has her moments). She tends to sling insults to keep people from getting close to her, and she even does it with people she has relationships with (seen with both Jackson and Aiden). Lydia makes silly decisions based on friendship or romantic feelings just like everyone else does.


After Jackson left, she completely shut down on emotions, choosing to have physical relationships with several guys (Aiden included). She didn’t get attached to any of them until Aiden came along. At first, she was aware he was using her, and she was using him in return. Eventually, though, she started to have more complicated feelings for him. She continues to see Aiden even though he disappeared for two months without talking to her – and even though he was partly responsible for Vernon Boyd's death. Lydia lets her desire for him lead her to make stupid decisions, like continuing to sleep with him. She tells herself this is PURELY physical, but there’s more to it than that, whether she wants to admit it or not. (She does eventually shut him down, because she cannot come to terms with the fact that he’s a murderer. She says he’s a bad guy, not a bad boy. She freely admits her attraction to the bad boy type, but she doesn’t want to be with someone who is a bad person; she herself is a good person at heart.)


Lydia is a pretty loyal friend, once she decides to actually be someone’s friend. She does help Allison and Scott plan to rob an armored truck in a bid to help Stiles when he is locked in a mental institution. The longer she maintains a close group of friends, the more willing she is to go out of her way to help them, even when she knows they could be breaking the law or doing something really stupid. As for Aiden, well, she's a teenager with a libido. Nobody's perfect – not even Lydia.


She isn’t totally on board with the having supernatural powers thing. She considers what Peter did to her to have pretty much ruined her life (which isn’t entirely inaccurate). However, since she has these powers to deal with, she does want to use them to help people. She can be incredibly selfish, and she’s guarded about emotionally connecting, but she has a genuine good heart under all of her teenage girl bullshit.

□ Age: 17
□ Gender: Female
□ Appearance: Lydia is pretty short, clocking in at only 5’3”. She usually has heels on that give her several inches more, however. She’s built slim, but she does have curves. While she’s thin, she can’t accurately be described as skinny.
She has long strawberry blonde hair that she tends to braid or curl. On occasion she will leave it totally straight, but not usually. Her eyes are light brown, close to hazel but not quite green enough to qualify as hazel. She has pale skin, and she works hard to keep it flawless.

She does have a mark behind one ear that looks like a number five, due to a recent attack.

□ Abilities/Powers: Unfortunately a lot of the mythology in Teen Wolf is only loosely explain. Lydia falls victim to that. Here is what is KNOWN about her power. I don't want to make too many conjectures about anything else right now, at least not until this season is over. So I'm just going with what we've been told. In the end, it won't matter right away since she won't HAVE any of her power right away.
Lydia is a banshee. In traditional Celtic myth, banshees are associated with being harbingers of death. The banshee is also called the wailing woman, and will often appear to someone who is about to die, or near someone who is about to die, shrieking at the top of their lungs. And other great mythological stories!
For Lydia, being a banshee seems to have the following effects.

1.
She's immune to werewolf bites (meaning even if an alpha werewolf bites her, she won't become a werewolf).
2.
She can hear things when someone is about to die. This is not explained super well in the canon (and this canon tends to contradict itself because what is editing?). But for example, she hears flies and cannot stop hearing them when William Barrow is encountered. This guy has flies bursting all out of him, and then he causes some shit at the school where he tries to kill Kira Yamaguchi. Another time, Lydia hears clanging, when Stiles is in an MRI machine. At that time, Stiles is possessed by the nogitsune (an evil spirit that would take me way too long to explain). So this death association thing is pretty loose! Basically she hears what's going on when people are in danger of dying, or so it seems. Yay Teen Wolf!
3.
As told to Lydia by Peter Hale, her scream does have some effects. The purpose of her scream (which tends to echo in an inhuman way, and can be heard for miles away from where she actually is) is not actually to affect anyone else. Peter says it drowns out all the other noise so she can hear the noise in her head that she's supposed to be focusing on. OF COURSE it's Peter so that should be taken with a grain of salt, but nothing has contradicted that as of now!
4.
According to word of god (though it hasn't been said this way in the show), the voices and whispers that Lydia hears are the voices of other banshees – sort of accessing a psychic network. That's pretty much all I have on that, and it wouldn't be terribly relevant in Ariel since there are no other banshees from Lydia's world in Ariel!
5.
Lydia does seem to have a psychic sixth sense about where bad things are going to happen. Though it's not always something she can interpret perfectly, she can tell when bad things are going to go down. She knew Barrow was in the school building, for instance; she was only thwarted because he masked his scent so he could not be found there. Still, the powers are pretty spot-on.

For non-supernatural powers, Lydia has a genius level IQ. She often plays this down, but it's definitely true. She can speak ancient as well as “modern” (read: less ancient!) Latin, she can do very complex math and science, and the characters who know how smart she actually is (read: Stiles Stilinski) are pretty much in awe of how smart she is. This isn't a power, so it won't be taken away. All banshee powers will be, though she might actually be totally fine with that.


□ Personal Items:
Several (let’s say 5?) outfits from home, including 1 designer purse, a small set of makeup (much less than she wishes she had).